Sep. 10th, 2004 01:51 pm
/Out on the wil(d and|ey,) windy moors/
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vin_petrolA couple of very pleasant evenings out.
Tuesday night was clear, so I went to Kirkham Priory with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gothgrr to do some astronomy. This was basically just a naked-eye and binocular session. I was able to show her Aquila, Aries, bits of Aquarius and her star sign constellation Capricornus (she currently has a picture of this as her default LJ user pic). I was also able to show her the Andromeda galaxy through my binoculars - it's a hazy blur, but I think it's always fun to see something with your own eye 2.2 million light years away. We also saw plenty of satellites, the odd shooting star, and the Milky Way was right overhead too - looking into this with binoculars is fantastic - all the tiny points of light that are distant stars really overwhelm you. Spookiest thing of the night was what appeared to be a 'formation' of three satellites. They passed overhead, all synchronised in their orbits. I've never seen anything like this before. All in all, a lovely night's observing. Plus, gothgrr had to borrow a jumper off me to keep warm, and she looked very cute in my 1980's stylee grey jumper :-)
Of course, a quick Google search and I find out that the three satellites are a set of 'secret' USA spy satellites: http://www.rense.com/ufo6/sat.htm
Recently,sheepthief wondered what we would name constellations if we were doing it now. Some names we came up with:
Capricornus:gothgrr suggested The Bat, due to it's "winged" shape. Sounds good to me.
Pegasus: I think the square of Pegasus could be The Television - a significant part of this current age.gothgrr suggested The Laptop, which is also a possibility.
Perseus: The Highchair, as it faintly resembles a child's highchair.
Wednesday evening was a night out in the pub withmistressmalaise, with appearances from Wesley [WINOLJ, and he had to go home before we even got to the pub 'cos his car was broken :-(], gothgrr, ant_girl and mister_ed. The women completely messed with my head by speaking in French to me lots. Bah! At about 23:00, we took up mistressmalaise's suggestion to go to a battlefield and, in a convoy of three cars, mistressmalaise, ant_girl, mister_ed and myself all went up to the obelisk at Marston Moor. I tried to spot stars through the cloudy sky, ant_girl spoke to someone on the phone, and mistressmalaise and mister_ed entertained us by singing. The highlight of the evening was definitely mistressmalaise's terrifying rendering of Wuthering Heights, complete with much waving about of her cloak. I have no idea what the people in the passing car made of it at all...
Tuesday night was clear, so I went to Kirkham Priory with
gothgrr to do some astronomy. This was basically just a naked-eye and binocular session. I was able to show her Aquila, Aries, bits of Aquarius and her star sign constellation Capricornus (she currently has a picture of this as her default LJ user pic). I was also able to show her the Andromeda galaxy through my binoculars - it's a hazy blur, but I think it's always fun to see something with your own eye 2.2 million light years away. We also saw plenty of satellites, the odd shooting star, and the Milky Way was right overhead too - looking into this with binoculars is fantastic - all the tiny points of light that are distant stars really overwhelm you. Spookiest thing of the night was what appeared to be a 'formation' of three satellites. They passed overhead, all synchronised in their orbits. I've never seen anything like this before. All in all, a lovely night's observing. Plus, gothgrr had to borrow a jumper off me to keep warm, and she looked very cute in my 1980's stylee grey jumper :-)Of course, a quick Google search and I find out that the three satellites are a set of 'secret' USA spy satellites: http://www.rense.com/ufo6/sat.htm
Recently,
sheepthief wondered what we would name constellations if we were doing it now. Some names we came up with:Capricornus:
gothgrr suggested The Bat, due to it's "winged" shape. Sounds good to me.Pegasus: I think the square of Pegasus could be The Television - a significant part of this current age.
gothgrr suggested The Laptop, which is also a possibility.Perseus: The Highchair, as it faintly resembles a child's highchair.
Wednesday evening was a night out in the pub with
mistressmalaise, with appearances from Wesley [WINOLJ, and he had to go home before we even got to the pub 'cos his car was broken :-(], gothgrr, ant_girl and mister_ed. The women completely messed with my head by speaking in French to me lots. Bah! At about 23:00, we took up mistressmalaise's suggestion to go to a battlefield and, in a convoy of three cars, mistressmalaise, ant_girl, mister_ed and myself all went up to the obelisk at Marston Moor. I tried to spot stars through the cloudy sky, ant_girl spoke to someone on the phone, and mistressmalaise and mister_ed entertained us by singing. The highlight of the evening was definitely mistressmalaise's terrifying rendering of Wuthering Heights, complete with much waving about of her cloak. I have no idea what the people in the passing car made of it at all...![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Ooh, the darkness is part of the atmosphere! Actually, to my (astronomer's) eyes it's *never* dark there - the light pollution from York and Leeds stops that. We could always go there when there's a full moon. I'm sure
You'll have to switch your phone off when we head out next time.
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*laughs* oh, I see... I don't think I've been there in daylight hours since the 80s! OK, I'll remember that and we'll do a little trip up there sometime. As long as you indulge me wibbling on about Cromwell and Fairfax.
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It's a deal... Although, I wonder if your power-of-falling-off-two-wheeled-transport extends to being a passenger on a motorbike. Eek!
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I'm sitting here typing with my (guitarists) hands and sitting on my (lazy nerds) arse cheeks, wondering what the feck (astronomer's) eyes might be.
You're not bloody patrick moore. Jeesh.
;P
...
resyk
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:-p
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Hand in your bleep card now, you terrible old hippy...
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It's my dad's fault! He's a big Neil Young fan y'see, and I've absorbed some of it by osmosis. I can remember this song from a very, very long time ago. I recall talking to
Did you know Neil Young sang with them at Woodstock, but that he's edited out of the film, as he has left the band by the time the film was released?
Mmmm. Rush this weekend. Er, that's not helping at all, is it? :-)
I'll go and put some Apop on.
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So what was it that Neil Young said/wrote that elicited 'Sweet Home Alabama' in response?
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Ooh, I don't know! Please do tell!
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Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singing songs about the South land
I miss ole 'Bamy once again, and I think it's a sin, yeah
Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard old Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A southern man don't need him around anyhow
{Refrain}
Sweet home Alabama, where the skies are so blue
Sweet home Alabama, Lord, I'm coming home to you
In Birmingham they love the Gov'nor, hoo hoo hoo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth
{Refrain}
Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they've been known to pick a song or two,yes they do
Lord, they get me off so much
They pick me up when I'm feeling blue, now how about you
There's a Drive-By Truckers song 'Ronnie and Neil', on their Southern Rock Opera album, which is about the Neil Young/Ronnie Van Zant thing, but even that doesn't explain it. I expect I could google for it, but I thought you might happen to know.
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'You're all a bunch of cross-burning inbreeds?'
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Southern man better keep your head
Don’t forget what your good book said
Southern change gonna come at last
Now your crosses are burning fast
Southern man
I saw cotton and I saw black
Tall white mansions and little shacks.
Southern man when will you pay them back?
I heard screamin’ and bullwhips cracking
How long? how long?
Southern man better keep your head
Don’t forget what your good book said
Southern change gonna come at last
Now your crosses are burning fast
Southern man
Lily belle, your hair is golden brown
I’ve seen your black man comin’ round
Swear by God I’m gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin’ and bullwhips cracking
How long? how long?
Though I do have to admit the helpful man in my head only has about a 60/40 success rate at being right.
RJ
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I must admit I'm not overly impressed with your alternative names, except for The Bat. Next time take drugs!
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OK. I've changed the title to a Perl regex reflecting both options :-)
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A *what*? Grandma doesn't understand this newfangled nonsense...
I had a quick google out of interest and it does look as though 'wiley' is correct - and it does make sense, as noted above. It's always amusing when lyrics that one thought one knew correctly for years turn out to be something different instead!
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Ah, regular expressions ("regexes") are an obscure branch of IT. The writing of them requires one to learn an obscure set of syntax rules in order to pattern match text strings. Gurus like me have spent many years improving our regex skills so that we can create huge write-only regexes that will make future generations of programmers tear their hair and gnash their teeth when they see them! :-)
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er, ok. Was I supposed to understand any of that? ;-p
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Just you be careful or I'll Explain It All To You at great length next time I see you! :-)
$_="krJhruaesrltre c a cnp,ohet";$_.=$1,print$2while s/(..)(.)//;
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yes absolutely - I've lived my life by that rule ;-)
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Curiously, I actually *have* lived my life by that rule! :-)
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You are *the* perl hacker to me Vince :)
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Could be. I just looked the words up via Google. I was always too distracted by the woman herself to pay much attention to the lyrics :-)
What happened to Ms Bush anyway?
I seem to recall someone telling me she had gone a bit erratic, and was 'resting' somewhere.
Next time take drugs!
*giggle* that was discussed :-)
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She's living near Reading spending all the time in her recording studio producing bugger all. She also seems to have got porky.